


Aftermath

by d__T



Series: Indigo North [9]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Indigo going more crazy, Self Harm, graphic dream sequences, suicide references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 09:00:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5862886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You've read <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5163833/chapters/11893373">click click boom</a>, now read Indigo experiencing the regrets and recriminations that come with murdering your fuckbuddy.</p><p>Nomad is, as always, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Najanaja/">najanaja's</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He walks away, then. The blue ute with the red-brown handprints on its flanks, the corpse slumped beside it, every possession and scratch in it telling the story of a life that he suddenly feels disconnected from. Scuffs of dust rise under his boots and he doesn't look back, not until he's run and halted and run again.

Then with hands on his knees to breath from the mad run, he looks back. He's not far, but he could hold the scene in the palm of his hand. So he does and he can see just as clearly the day he got the damn ute, still dusty but clean of grease and blood and freer of scratches. The old bastard he bought it from is probably dead now, and that deserves a dry chuckle.

He rubs his hands together and dried blood flakes and rolls and falls from them. Then balls his fists up and shoves them in his pockets and hunches his shoulders and ambles back toward the remnants of his life.

"What a fuck."

"Never knew when ta shut your mouth."

"Yeah, me too."

Indigo crouches in front of Nomad's body, pushes his head upright with a stained fingertip. "Ya still a bastard."

Nomad's head slumps again when released.

Indigo stares at him. "Still giving me shit even though ya dead. I see how it is."

Most of his kit from his feral scavenger days is still in the back of the ute and from the stashed equipment, he pulls two planks. Acid rain and sun baked until warped and twisted and bone white. They seem to shiver in his hands, each thread of the silver dead wood becoming real and live and visible to him for the split moment before they're dropped against the lowered tailgate. Then he gets to work.

First the motorcycle. He's seen it through his scavenger's eyes before, but now it is his to take. He won't part this out though; it is fully functional and well cared for in the way that the bike of any bikie that's survived this long is. Scuffed, olive finish and chrome polished under the inevitable dust. He knows it will start well, if he chooses to start it. He walks it around and up the planks into the bed of the ute, a ratcheted rope keeping it from rolling back on him on the slope. He sets it on its stand, and ties the brake. 

"Hey, stay right there. No fancy ideas, alright?"

He pats the bike's tank, and then hops over the side of the ute.

Nomad's clothing is scattered from Indigo's haste earlier. Now he dresses Nomad again. There is nothing he can do about the hole in the shirt, or where the blood rolled thick and is still damp and staining through. The jacket covers though, and Indigo drags the body up into the bed of the ute by the collar of it. Laid beside his bike he suddenly looks small.

Indigo turns away, and picks dried blood from under a fingernail.

"No."

He hops down again, the thud of his boots in the dirt suddenly loud in his ears, the jar of the impact weakening. The landing puts him into a squat and he stays there with his hands on the ground to steady himself. He shakes his head to clear it, stands, staggers, steps back and leans against the wall of the ute to steady himself.

"Now?" It's a plaintive question.

"Not now." He tells it to Nomad's helmet, staring accusingly at him from the dirt. There's a faint track in the dust where it had rolled and settled upright. To look at him.

He sinks down again, keeping eye contact with the dark space where the visor should be. He reaches out for it, one hand on each side of the helmet like he's cradling Nomad's face between his hands.

"Ain't sorry, mate. Ain't sorry."


	2. Chapter 2

The steering wheel has two rings to it; the slender inner chrome one hard and unforgiving and the outer one's original white and blue leather wrapped over with fabric and leather strips to bulk it out a little. Indigo's fingers are jammed into the corners of the crossmembers where the welded steel bulges out and bites a little at his flesh. He picks at it, destroying his fingernails and resolutely not looking at the blue helmet perched on the dashboard.

It stares at him, and he can feel it.

He heels the truck around, and cuts path alongside the highway. Not the Transcon, he hasn't run that alone in years. But he's not alone, not now, he can feel the weight of Nomad's body at his back, the cold Beretta at his hip, the helmet on his dash. All taught and pulling at him.

He will approach obliquely. Over land, instead of on the road. Dust rises, a signal plume at any other time he would be concerned about.

He pats the helmet. They’re in this together.

There is an outcropping here. A messy pile of rocks jumbled up and fallen. Some imported and arranged, the outward faces marked time and time again. Indigo's mark is in there, as is Nomad's. But they are buried among others; it has been a long time since they have used this message board.

He stops the ute and follows an old trail by foot. Others have followed this, there are fresh tracks in the worn grass here. The marks thin, and Indigo has eyes for only one. He finds a boulder marked with only one symbol, only one hand. He touches it, fingers as light and curious as the ghosts that follow him.

He walks back, and fetches the ute around the rocks to the boulder he found. He can't move it, should not move it. The pick axe is still in Nomad's pack and it seems fitting to use it.

"Looks like ya finally get your trench."

It is laborious, but he cuts his way into the ground beside the boulder. It is easier here, than in that one time under the tree. Mostly because there is no tree to hold the soil together, just the tough grasses. 

He thinks he heard something, and straightens to look about. To make sure. There is no sound, just his breathing and some small animal in the scrub and the zoom of a flying insect. 

The helmet looks back at him from the hood of the ute, face dark and empty. Indigo does not remember putting it there.

He turns back to the axe and the dirt.

The air is hot and still and the body did not cool. Even the chill from night is gone, as has been for some time now. Indigo sets the planks again, and pulls Nomad by his boots until he rests on them. Then, he methodically goes through all the pockets he cares to find.

The only things that interest him: a battered wallet with the Armalite scrip and some coastie cash in it and some things that perhaps only have meaning to Nomad and now mean nothing to anyone, and the knife that laid the scars in his face and chest. He pockets the knife and the cash, and tucks the wallet into a bag slung on the bike.

He knows that bikies are buried with their helmets. He drags Nomad to the cut in the ground and lays him in with his head by the rock. It is easier to kick the dirt in on top of him than it was to dig it out, and he lays the clumps of grass in on top to keep the dirt from blowing away.

"Nomad. Well, ain't got nothing to say, and you ain't listening anyway." He crouches down, one hand falls to the axe for balance and the other rests on the disturbed grass. He looks at his stained hand a moment before continuing. "Seems right you get buried by a rock that says yer gonna piss on somebody."

He chuckles and pats the grass. "Hope you get to piss on people in hell."


	3. Chapter 3

He heads toward the coast. There will be a station house along his path, he knows it. He's been to some of them before, although those are probably up and gone now.

Lord, Nomad had been stupid when they were young ferals fighting and fucking it out in the wasteland and trying to get picked up by the major players. 

"You-" He speaks to the blue, blank faced helmet on the dashboard "-are a stupid fuck."

"Yeah, so was I."

Fingers drum on the chrome ring of the steering wheel, metal unforgiving against his bony joints and staccato rhythm.

"I didn't come out here to survive."

He takes a blank look from the helmet.

"Hah! And look at us now."

"Shut up, asshole."


	4. Chapter 4

Indigo can't sleep in the space beside the motorcycle in the bed of the ute. It's a lovely night, but there has been no rain and blood is dried firm there, like the handprints on the flanks of the ute, like the blood still caught around his nails.

He sleeps across the bench seat in the cab, insect netting draped to cover the rolled down window.

Demons come for him in the night. Blue eyed, and brawny. Mixed, features slurring with another bikie he'd killed, Beretta pressed against his forehead. Blue eyes widen below and beside the blunt end of the Beretta. He pulls the trigger.

He pulls the trigger.

He pulls the trigger.

His arm jerks with recoil, bikie skull snaps back. His boot presses against the bikie's chest, the force flexes through his thigh and the bikie falls backwards with a thud.

He pulls the trigger.

Blue eyes look up at him with wounded betrayal, the black hole above and between them oozes. Nomad stands, and the shot through his chest does not slow him. Nomad pushes the Beretta out of his way to grasp Indigo by the throat. Indigo's feet leave the ground as Nomad picks him up; he chokes, he kicks out. He can not shift Nomad's hands from his throat, but Nomad throws him down weak and limp. 

He looks up now, and the black running down Nomad's face drips on him and eats through his skin. He can not stand, can not roll away from the kick. The steel shows in the toe where the leather is worn through, bright and clear like the stars that fall in the dark. It pulls away, a separating film of red glossing it.

He feels nothing.

He pulls the trigger.

He feels everything.

The bullet passes through the soft tissues in the arc of his jaw, destroys his tongue and the vomer, shattering the sphenoid bone and part of the occipital bone as well. His finger relaxes on the trigger as the bullet scrambles through his brain and he knows that he is dead.

He does not sleep again until the visions reach through the windscreen and slam his face off the steering wheel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The bullet passes through the soft tissues in the arc of his jaw, destroys his tongue and the vomer, shattering the sphenoid bone and part of the occipital bone as well.](http://anatomicdeadspace.tumblr.com/post/136494347473/3d-reconstruction-of-a-self-inflicted-gun-shot)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly, Followdog!

Followdog gets the door when there is a knock on it. Few knock, and he brings the shotgun with him. An easy threat cradled in his tattooed hands.

The man on the other side is thin and wary. His eyes slide down the shotgun and linger on Followdog's hands but he makes no motion.

"Whaddya want."

"I have." Indigo twists his raw fingers. "A delivery for you."

Followdog nods. "Give it here."

"It's in the ute." It's parked in the yard, visible from the door.

Followdog looks between the man in the door and the ute. He looks back. "Give it here."

"It's a motorcycle."

"Back the ute around so I can see it." Followdog is taking no risks.

Indigo does so, and Followdog sees the motorcycle lashed and cared for. "What do you want for it?"

Indigo works at the lashing, straps coming free under his hands and falling around his boots.

"What do you want for it."

"Nothing."

Followdog walks up the plank and throws Indigo against the motorcycle. Indigo grins up at the man, playing the game he’s known for. "Ain't lyin'."

"Sure you ain't."

Indigo looks at Followdog's tanned fist twisting his shirt, and shrugs. "Belonged to a Phi probie. Score's settled." 

"You kill him?"

Indigo looks up at Followdog. He deliberately twitches the scarred side of his face. "What if I did?"

"We'll tell them. They'll come for you." Indigo sees then that there is someone identical to the man holding him watching from the door.

"Personal business. It's settled."

"Fukkin better be." Followdog steps away from Indigo. He does not help as Indigo frees the motorcycle and walks it down the plank to the yard.

Indigo places the keys and the wallet on the tank. "He had a good death."

Followdog grunts. Acknowledgment of words spoken, but not agreement to the quality of the death.

"Go."

Indigo goes.


	6. Chapter 6

He puts the helmet on.

It’s simple. He turns it in his hands until he and the open gape where the visor is missing are facing the same direction. Then he places it over his head.

He doesn’t bother with the chin strap. It’s too big and it would tip sideways on him anyway.

It stinks, noticeable because it’s different from Indigo’s personal stink. He breathes it in, and out. The poor fit of the helmet washes his breath back over his face, hot and damp and foul.

“Ah, fuckoff.”

He yanks the helmet off and slams it down on the seat beside him. He can’t see it there.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of this chapter is Najanaja's words.

Indigo is roving simply, and resting in the homely places, the mulga groves and riverbank heights. Drier now, and more dusty, so that he takes to wearing a bandanna on his face. It doesn’t matter because he’s known by the blue ute, and by the dark eyes that people have called both pretty and crazy.

The man who finds him is a stranger, but he comes stirring up dirt with an olive Honda CB750. The bike still roars strong and tireless. Indigo stands behind the ute, bracing the Berretta over the side of the tray. He watches a thin and unfamiliar man stop and dismount from a burly and familiar bike, and show his hands. He lets him carefully walk to the ute, and say some soft words. He talks of truce and final words and says that old, rough name.

The bikie hands Indigo a thick, downy wad of paper. The vagabond shoves it in a pocket before it gets wet from his hand. By the time the man has walked back to his bike, Indigo’s lips are cold and his muscles quiver.

Indigo climbs into the comfort of the ute’s gritty, hot tray. Pulling out the paper, he pops the folds open to show disheveled letters. This is how Nomad wrote: square and thin and long flicks of a pen that barely cohere. By intuition, Indigo knows that some sentences have been copied many times; they’re ghostly and rushed. The revisions, the additions, were dragged hard and slow on the paper. For that reason, he reads them first.

“I was proud of you.” “So that is my mistake.”

And then, with both hands, Indigo covers the paper on the dusty tray of the ute. He bares the sentences one by one, taking them all in.

“I never liked what happened to you. I know I had a part in that. I dident see you for so long. You were probably dead. When I saw you. I thought wed be back to us.  **I was proud of you** . But I forgot it was not us.  **So that is my mistake** . Forgot I was Xi. And when you hit me that is your mistake. And you forgot too. Because what is alright to us is not any more. Because it made me look bad I couldent say no to Colston. If I did it wouldent of mattered. But I dont forget it. And I know you dont forget it. But I wish we did.”

A part in that, Indigo thinks. A mistake.

The bikie had declared: Nomad’s words make peace between Indigo and the Phi’s. All of them but one, he thinks.

Instead of slipping down and around to enter the cab through the doors, he puts the papers through the back window. They drop onto the seat where his boots won’t catch them, and then he puts himself through the window after. The pale blue helmet stares at him from the dash, gape faced and empty.

He puts his fingers into it like he’s hooking out eyes, then grips upward. It lifts in his hand, seemingly heavier than it was and never meant to be held this way. The passenger door thuds open under his boot heel; it has grown loose and Indigo has not had interest to fix it for some time now.

He screams and throws the helmet. It clatters and rolls on the rocky ground well beyond the shadow of the ute.

He up and follows it, jumping down to the dirt. But he falls to his knees and open-handed hits the ground, puncturing his palms on the rocks.

He screams again, wordless and blind.


	8. Chapter 8

The taken knife rides hot and heavy in his pocket. Sometimes it clicks against the lighter that also resides in that pocket. Now, the clip snicks as he pulls it free. It’s larger and heavier than his own, with a darker steel blade. It seems appropriate.

He pulls the fabric from his face and wets it with his canteen. The water cools where he scrubs his face with it, but the water itself is warm. Some fidgeting with the glove compartment yields a flask of rum, dark and potent. He splashes some of that on the cloth, and then scrubs again, but only the left side of his face now.

Skin dry and tight from the alcohol and the knife cleaned with the same, he yanks the rearview around so he can see himself work. One fingertip traces the twisted scar on his right cheek, made by the knife he now holds.

He hasn’t really looked at it in a while; it’s thinned some but is still white against his tanned skin.

He holds the knife up to it, and it’s meaningless.

He traces a symmetrical mark on his other cheek with his finger, and the light touch leaves a ghost. He traces the ghost with the point of the knife, a steel caress.

He cuts the ghost free and blood drips down his face. He watches it, then separates the edges of the cut with the flat point of the knife. It bleeds more freely now, and he encourages it.

“Fuck you.” He says to his reflection. His voice is hard.

The helmet stares at him, and now he can feel it. He rubs a finger in the blood on his cheek and then marks the helmet with it. Cross, circled and dragged down over the chin.

“Fuck you.” He says to the helmet. Softer, now.


	9. Chapter 9

Something in him is tracking time despite the lost days and nights. Despite the blank face of the clock in the dash, dead since well before he got the ute. It counts the days, and tells him  _ you must leave the badlands now _ .

This voice has never failed him. It tells him the truth. He leaves the badlands.

For a moment or an eon he is suspended like a blue bead between the endless horizon of the badlands and the vertical smudge of the cities.

The cities do not beckon him like the wastes do. The wastes say in sweet tongue, whatever you’ve done and whatever you’ve seen and whatever has happened to you,  _ you can start over _ . 

The cities do not promise this.


	10. Chapter 10

The Transcon does not have truck stops. It has fortifications in anything larger than a small city, and sometimes bunkers along the way. Between that, there is fuck all.

The gates welcome him. The wastes whisper a sweet enticement to him.

He goes through. The ute goes in the lot with the other vehicles. Protected there, but he still puts all his things in the cab of it, and locks it. He takes special care to hide the helmet from sun, something tells him that is right thing to do.

Backpack and bedroll in hand, he goes to the main building. The hard faced woman there marks him as present and alive and able to drive, and that’s when he realizes he still has blood on his face from the cut.

He would have gone straight to the truck yard, but the blood on his face. He makes a detour through the showers. There is no one there; most of the crews go to the city and only come back the night before. Through the shivery numbness, Indigo manages to be thankful for this. Nevertheless, he showers with the dark bladed knife clipped to one of his bracelets like he’s bathing in the river.

Then to the truck yard, and to wait for the rest of his crew.


	11. Chapter 11

He startles. He knows he left the helmet tucked well into the passenger footwell of his ute to protect it from sun. It’s sitting on the dash of the truck, looking blankly at him. There is no blood on it. He looks around; Joe is driving, and Eric is repetitively cleaning a rifle.

They would say something if they could see it.

He goes up top to walk around for a while. The tether drags behind him on the rail and the wind whistles through the channels in the soles of his boots. It tries to peel him off the steel and aluminum. It always tries to peel him off the steel and aluminum.

Joe speaks when Indigo drops into the cab again. “Anything?”

“Neh.” Indigo hangs his tether on the hook with all the others and turns to the sleeper.

“It’s your turn to drive!”

They haven’t needed to stop the truck to do a driver transfer in years. This time is no different; the truck barely deviates from its course and then they’re tracking straight and smooth again.

He looks at the helmet, turned to face him now. He looks to the road and it’s not in his peripheral vision. Not real. He sighs. “I’m quitting.”

There is a lengthy pause, a mile a minute and the little wheels in the odometer tick over several times.

“Yeah?”

“Yup.”

“Hey Eric! Wanna go to the Enclaves?” Joe grins, they must have talked about this while Indigo was out in the wastes.

“This cargo ain’t useful. Next time.”

“So practical. Enclaves, Indigo?”

“Nothanks.”   
  
“Where ya gonna go?”

“Don’t know. Hitch up with someone who needs a truckie. Or bury myself in my ute out there.” Indigo shrugs and speaks easily, like he hadn’t just suggested he was going to kill himself.

“Wherever we end up, you know you got a place with us.”

“Thanks mate.”

The odometer ticks over.

The odometer ticks over.


End file.
